With Feeling

Two: When I Think of Home

I have a pet peeve. I like to call it "middle-class,
white boy angst." Characteristic of this blight on American
culture is a whiny complaint that can be summed up in the
cry, "Pity me, I grew up privileged!" It often results in such
maladies as monotonous garage bands, bad performance
art, and college fraternities. I won't mention, at this time,
self-indulgent memoirs.

Even as I deride the pain of the privileged, I cannot
help but reach into my bag of favorite clichés and pull out
this one: Everything, no matter how bright, has a shadow
side.

I had a great childhood. I've called it a ridiculously
happy childhood. I grew up on a farm in central Texas and
that farm is the only place I've ever thought of as home. It's
the place I always returned to for refuge, or it was so long
as my mother was alive. Since her death, the farm has
been less of a refuge, which should make obvious that a
home is more than a place, but my mother will be the subject
of another essay sometime. This one is about the place.

When I think of home, I think of the kitchen. My
mother was always cooking and baking. She would let me
watch and, after a fashion, help. I have memories of
standing on a chair beside her at the kitchen counter as she
mixed cake batter or cookie dough or worked a yeast dough
for bread or coffee cake. By the time I was 12, I had already
mixed my own batter and dough -- admittedly with mixed
results but always with encouragement to try again.

Summer was a season of nearly constant activity.
The kitchen sweltered with the steam of the pressure cooker
and the air popped with the sealing of Mason jars holding
freshly canned green beans, tomatoes, peaches, jellies, and
preserves. July usually saw my mother's hands stained
purple from the wild, mustang grapes she squeezed for jelly
and juice.

At some point in the summer, my youngest (but still
older) brother and I were enlisted to peel peaches, to make
ourselves useful while we watched the afternoon reruns of
the Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. Part of the peach
peeling ritual included this litany:

"You're cutting off half the peach with the peel."

"I'm trying."

"And don't hold the knife that way. You'll cut off a
finger."

"I'm being careful."

You're eating more than you're bringing to the
kitchen."

"But they're so good!"

"You're going to get the runs from eating all those
peaches."

"No I won't!"

And so forth.

When I think of home, I think of animals. We always
had two or three dogs, almost exclusively collies or collie
mixes. They helped with the cattle and guarded the house.
They guarded me. When I was about five or six, I was
startled by a snake in our backyard. I ran screaming into the
house and by the time my mother and I went back to where
the snake was, Buster, my big white collie hero, was
slinging pieces of the snake across the yard. I always felt
safe with Buster around.

We had cats. Lots of them, sometimes up to 20 at
time. Like the dogs, they also had a practical purpose in
that they were meant to keep down the rat, mouse, and
snake populations. They were not pets, certainly not in a
"lap-cat" sort of way. This was in open rebellion of my
many, bloodied attempts at taming them. I credit these cats
with my developing quick reflexes. I had favorites, all right,
and some would deign to let me stroke them from time to
time, but mostly they were objects of desire more than
possession.

There were cows and I had a favorite of those, too.
Jenny, a Jersey. One of our milk cows. She let me
approach her in the field and hug her neck. If she were
lying down, I could lie down on top of her. I think this
worried my parents some, for a variety of reasons, but I
loved that cow. Her qualities were in marked contrast to her
Holstein stable-mate, Tina, who barely stood for us to milk
her.

(Even in my farming community, I don't recall anyone
else in my high school having to milk cows -- by hand -- as
part of their before and after school chores. There are
aspects of my youth that are anachronistic that way. I also
recall a time, from my early childhood, when we didn't have
running water in the kitchen, but I digress.)

We always had fresh eggs and more often than not
we also had fresh chicken to fry. I learned early enough
how to butcher a chicken, gut it, clean a gizzard and what
have you. In addition to the staples to our diet, I also loved
to watch a mother hen call her chicks. I remember one little,
brown, bantam hen in particular who was one of the all time
great mother hens. I would watch her brood disappear into
her puffed up breast as she whirred and purred her
gathering song. I wished I could shrink to three inches tall
so I might disappear under her wings. It looks very warm
and snug in there. It is that memory, precisely that comes to
mind when I pray with the psalmist, "Hide me under the
shadow of your wing." Add the fierce protection of that little
brown chicken and the image of God as mother hen is
indeed very strong for me.

We raised our own bacon, too. Baby pigs are among
the most beautiful and fun creatures on God's earth. They
also grow up into ugly, smelly, contrary beasts. Even if
knowing the end result of those piggies didn't sway my
affection, I learned quick enough not to invest too much
emotional energy into them. Chances were high that, come
winter, I would be feeding my beloved Oinky through the
sausage grinder and hanging him in the smokehouse. Such
is the reality of farm life, and it was true of all those pretty
little babies, whether calves, chicks or piglets.

When I think of home, I think of long, hot summer
days, getting dirty from head to toe from playing "trucks" on
the west side of the house. That end of the yard, under big
elm trees, was where we were allowed to destroy the grass
with our toy trucks, tractors, and road maintainers. My
brother and I would spend hours there, making roads and
plowing fields. We'd mark roads and draw squares for the
homes of our imaginary people, a good many of whom were
based upon real neighbors.

I think of winters in the woods, chopping firewood
and burning brush. I especially enjoyed throwing on the
yaupon branches. Yaupons are sold in many local
nurseries, but on the farm they grew like weeds and we
treated them as such. What made them fun to burn was
their leaves have some waxy coating that makes them burst
into flame as soon as they're tossed onto the fire, almost like
throwing kerosene on it. I also had the job, eventually, of
splitting wood and I would revel in the rare times when I
could split a piece with one swing of the ax. Speaking of
chopping wood makes me think of the strange pleasure we
had in eating homemade ice cream in the winter, huddled as
closely to the wood-burning heater as we could get.

I think of sensations that are difficult to put into
writing. There is the smell of a fire being started in the
heater on cold winter mornings, the taste of warm, fresh
milk, still frothy from the milking. There are sounds from the
farm, the grasshoppers' rhythmic, clattering buzz, my
father's voice calling in the cattle . . . Lucinda Williams'
album title, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, takes me back to
the farmhouse, getting up to look out a window, wondering
who's driving up and why the dogs aren't barking.

Much like the deeds of Jesus, there would not be
enough books in the world to record all the sensations that
come to mind when I think of the farm, when I think of home.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

And the farm was rich with daydreams, hopes, and
possibilities.

From day one, I had this creative impulse, a curse as
much as a blessing. I grew up drawing, copying art from
coloring and comic books and magazines. My first dream
was to be a comic book artist, but I also wrote the stories I
drew and worked at prose as well as comic book scripts.
Then there were the days that I imagined myself a
performer, an actor, singer, dancer. I daydreamed of doing
pratfalls and funny voices with Lucille Ball and Carol
Burnett. I pictured myself in some horrible accident so that I
could run through the fields at bionic speed with Steve
Austin and Jaime Sommers. I was smart. I even pictured
Dr. Rudy Wells calculating how often my bionic parts would
need replacing since I was still growing.

I have a vivid memory of plotting a Justice League of
America story while I was shoveling sorghum (or maize, as
we called it) into the auger that carried the grain into the
barn. You see, the JLAers showed up on the farm, tracking
some dangerous villain who, it turns out, was hiding in our
barn, under the newly harvested grain. I'd be the one to
discover him. We kept an iron rod in the mounds of grain
and we would pull this rod out and feel it to see if the grain
was heating up. Fresh grain, especially if there were green
kernels in it, could get over-heated and spontaneously
combust, so if the rod felt warm, we had to shovel the grain
around, to help it dry out, cool down. In my story, it would
be when I pushed this rod back into the grain that I would
discover this villain because I'd hit the oxygen tank he wore
while hiding out under the sorghum.

In that sense, the farm was a place of possibilities for
me. It represents a place from which any road was
conceivable, a place from which and journey could start.
Even if I recognized the fantasy aspects of some of my
dreams -- and I'm not saying I always did -- I felt it was
inevitable that something great was waiting for me, literally
waiting for me that would appear without effort on my part,
whether I became successful as an artist, an actor, a writer
or (as the fantasy would have had it) all three and more.

And here's where we move around, get another
perspective, see the shadow thrown by the brightness of
this childhood.

In my family, in my schools, in my church, in my
community, there was no one to show me how.

Had I wanted to become a farmer, carpenter, banker,
pastor, teacher, butcher or any number of fine professions, I
would have found plenty of mentors and role models.

But for the handful of us who had this creative
impulse, the most we had at our disposal were a few piano
teachers and my own parents hadn't the financial resources
for such things. That's nearly beside the point. Even if I had
been given the lessons, the prevailing attitudes for it would
have been to treat it as a hobby, not as a calling. Most of
my drawing and writing was self-taught and even when I
went to college to learn about acting, I couldn't overcome
those attitudes of my hometown that said this art thing was
okay as a sideline, but you really need a real job.

Part and parcel to this was also the -- to call it
homophobia would be to give it too much credit. There
simply wasn't the possibility that two men might fall in love.
There were no role models for adult, loving relations
between couples of the same gender. Just as I was quietly
taught to numb my creative energies, I also learned to numb
the feelings I had for other boys or male teachers or the Six
Million Dollar Man. To say I numbed them suggests that I
recognized my homo-erotic feelings, which I didn't at the
time. It just didn't occur to me that my "admiration" for
certain men was closer to what my male classmates were
feeling for the girls, female teachers, or Farrah Fawcett. I
tried to have girlfriends because that's what I had modeled
for me, but I had no idea that what I self-labeled as shyness
was really lack of attraction.

Perhaps now, in these post-Ellen days, gay farm boys
have some way of at least guessing why they don't quite fit
in, but from the 1970s, my strongest recollection of "gay" is
Jack Tripper, on Three's Company, and he only pretended
to be gay. And the way he pretended did not look like
anything I wanted to be.

It would foolish of me to overlook one of the larger
driving forces in my childhood and that's my own drive to be
good, to be pious, to be righteous. In my puberty, if I
admitted that I thought about sex at all, it would have been
that false humility way of admitting, "of course, we all do, but
I try to control it." My bent toward wanting to be the
exemplary Christian wouldn't have allowed me to admit, had
I been accused, that I really did notice men's chests more
than women's. And I shouldn't kid myself or my reader.
Had there been a positive gay male role model available to
me, the church's condemnation of homosexuality would
have had me disregarding him with something along the
lines of, "Well, just because he's a nice man doesn't mean
he'll get into heaven if he keeps on sinning like that."

It's a difficult matrix of things that keeps one down.
There are people from my home community who have overcome both a lack of childhood instruction and hometown
non-acceptance of homosexuality and they have gone on to
successful careers in creative fields while I remain
somewhat stuck in a bureaucratic, almost anti-creative day
job. Without going too much into other people's lives, I'll
sum up the difference between me and these others with my
observation (or excuse, if you will -- I will not deny it's
possible application) that some people come from families
whose dysfunctions propel them from home while others
come from families with dysfunctions that compel them to
stay home. In other words, some people in my home town
reach high school graduation and head out of town without
regret, remorse or intention to return. Most of us focus on
the good things in that town because we're supposed to
honor and cherish our roots, but we also can't seem to see
beyond that town. Families and their dysfunctions have the
power to make a difference between these choices. Maybe
I've grown cynical in my adulthood, but rare, it seems to me,
is the family that encourages and supports a child to leave
home and the child goes on to self-differentiate and fulfill
individual dreams.

To talk about my particular family, there is something
I've only recently come to recognize, a quiet pervasive
message, a subtly taught lesson that I fight every time I sit
down to write a story.

That teaching is this: Don't aspire.

That's it. Don't aspire.
At the very least, accept your lot in life and learn to
be content with it.

My evidence for this teaching comes from various
places. For example, I am the youngest of seven children. I
have a number of musically gifted siblings. Two brothers
have taught themselves to play guitar to a respectable level
of proficiency. One sister has a voice that might have
carried her through a classical music career. They've all
learned to be content to use these gifts for weddings,
funerals, and weekend dance bands. I don't mean to imply
that this is a misuse of the gift, only that it is an
underdevelopment of it, a settling for an average, at best,
level of excellence.

Of the seven siblings, only two of us attended
college. Neither of us got up the ambition to pursue careers
in the fields of our degrees.

When I decided to go to college and major in theater,
my father wondered if it wouldn't be better if I stayed at
home and kept working in the grocery store where I had my
high school job.

When I was working on my masters degree at the
seminary and I mentioned the possibility of pursuing another
advanced degree, my mother commented, "Oh, after this,
don't you think that's enough school?"

I want to be clear on this, lest I begin to sound like
the privileged angst-meisters I derided earlier. I understand
the caution and concern behind the above scenarios to be
born of love. My home wasn't a home of hugs and kisses
and spoken "I love yous." We were German Lutherans,
after all. But it was a home of care and protection. I
suspect the caution is one rooted in surviving the Great
Depression, born of a love that doesn't want to see offspring
fail as so many people in the 1930s failed. The slightly
more positive, underlying sentiment behind the lessons in
not aspiring might be: Play it safe and don't get hurt.

My parents didn't want to see their children get hurt.
How do I fault them for that?

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Have I said what a great home I had growing up, how
happy my childhood was? Let me say it again, anyway. I
had a great childhood, safe and happy.

I mean, we were seven children who grew up on a
farm, surrounded by all the dangers farm life has to offer,
and we all have complete sets of fingers, toes and limbs.
It's not unheard of, but it's still worth noting.

I currently take modern dance classes. Every once in
a while there is a collision in my brain, a moment of
cognitive dissonance overwhelms me and my body doesn't
move as well as it might. "Farm boys don't even know who
Martha Graham is, much less study in her field of
achievement." Other times, I'm able to find freedom in this
art form and I am released from the voices in my head that
would question why I try to express myself in any art form.

I write all this as plainly as I know how because there
is something I don't want to do. I don't want to lose sight of
the great things my past gave me. I also don't want to
pretend that I'm free of the anger behind such obvious
questions like, "What if there had been an artist community
near my home?" or "What if I'd grown up in a home, church
or community that accepted gay folk?"

I joke about white boy angst because I've got it and
I've fought it with nearly every keystroke of this essay. Pity
me because I had a happy childhood and I can't quite pull it
together as an adult? No, that's not what I want you to hear
in these words. If I examine my life only to complain and
make excuses, then that life isn't any more worth living than
an unexamined life. What I want you to hear in this these
words is that there is a way to figure out the why of our
failures of our discontent.

It's the only way to do anything about them.

I have a faith in the Good News of Jesus, in the
coming and already started Reign of God wherein we are all
released from the layers of hurt, lack, and mis-applied good
intentions that keep us from defying gravity. In the Reign of
God, the hungry are blessed with fullness, the naked are
blessed with clothes, the ones who bring peace are
recognized as the children of God and the grieving ones
laugh.

I suppose the "right" thing to say is that when I think
of home, I think of the Reign of God, of heaven or something
similarly trite. Well, trite sayings often have some small
kernel of truth in them and greater Christians than I have
commented that our longing for God is a homesickness for a
place we've never been, that our restlessness won't stop
until we rest in God.

So I say this about this ultimate home of my faith: In
the Reign of God, as best that I can picture it, I dance and
know how to tell my stories well and right. I do not fight,
indeed, I do not hear the voices in my head that say success
and excellence are for other people, not for me. In the place
that is prepared for me, these ideals are integrated with the
things I love. There are coloring and comic books. I taste
fresh coffee cake and drink homemade grape juice. There
is the smell of dry summer fields and cool grass under my
bare feet.

I hear the cluck of a great Mother Hen and rest safely
in Her warm, feathered breast.